Between the Lines
by LittleLotte17
Summary: Aili Lavellan doesn't have copper marigolds, but she makes do. Awkward nerd wooing.


AN: Something sweet and fluffy as an apology for the last one.

Rated T: ? It is pretty safe but might be a cuss word floating around here somewhere.

Disclaimer: Not mine. No Money. All Hail BioWare.

* * *

Solas had already knocked several times on the Inquisitor's door without receiving a reply before he finally decided to let himself in. He had confirmation from both Cullen and Josephine that the Dalish elf had all but scampered back to her quarters like an overzealous puppy when her advisors had given her the rest of the afternoon off to spend as she pleased. Apparently, whatever had gotten Aili so excited was also keeping her from answering the door.

"Lethallan?" he called out from the bottom of the short flight of stairs that led to the main portion of the room. Silence was his only answer. No, not complete silence. There was a soft noise floating down to him, like slow, even breathing.

Sure enough, Aili was on the floor, laying face down in a large leather-bound tome, her hand still gripping her quill loosely, her fingers smudged with ink. There was a vast ocean of parchment and books and scrolls cluttered around her in messy heaps; it looked as though a storm had blown through her room. Scattered notes covered every available surface, some in hastily scrawled Common, but most in shakily written Elvhen, covered in blots and cross-outs. The carpet was littered with partially empty ink bottles, one of which had been knocked over at some point, leaving a dark, telling stain in its wake. Josephine was going to be livid.

Now he knew why the Archivist had practically been in tears when Solas had asked for the tome about ancient temples located in the Brecillian forest. She must have been smuggling books up here for weeks. He sighed.

He attempted to step over a mountainous pile of dusty volumes that claimed to be about the Elvhen pantheon in front of her couch, and promptly trod on a previously abandoned quill, muttering a dark string of curses as it stabbed him directly in the soft flesh between his toes. He glared sharply back at the books which had concealed the secret weapon and was met with a crudely drawn portrait of Andruil smirking at him from one of the covers. It figured.

The noise woke the younger elf, and she groggily rubbed at her face, smearing a long trail of black ink across the bridge of her nose all the way down to the corner of her mouth. Her hair was severely mussed and her clothes were disheveled; Aili had never looked more the part of the 'Dalish Savage' than she did right now. She gave him a bleary smile.

"Aneth ara," she yawned. "What brings you here, Sol-" Aili broke away midsentence, the color draining from her face. Quick as lightening, one hand darted out to grab the sheet she had most recently be writing on and crumpled it behind her back. Her eyes flitted around the utter ruin of her room, guilt and embarrassment flooding her features, tinting her cheeks a blazing scarlet.

"Uh," she stuttered, "Y-you should go. I mean, l-leave." He frowned in concern, and she immediately began backpedalling. " _Fenehdis_ , I didn't mean Skyhold! Don't _leave_ leave! I j-just… Um, could you maybe...not be _here_? In my room. Just for now. Please?" She squirmed under his scrutinizing gaze and looked distinctly like a rabbit that had gotten caught in a snare.

"I can return later, if you wish," he assured her. "But may I inquire why you have taken to hoarding the Inquisition's books like a dragon with a pile of gold before I am ushered out?" He raised a brow curiously. Aili frowned down at the tome she had previously been using as a pillow, wiping a dirty hand on her trousers carelessly before reaching out and turning a page with an air of reverence.

"The Dalish… We don't really have a lot of books," she confessed sadly. "Not histories anyway. There was always a novel or two floating around somewhere. But the big old ones are hard to maintain out in the wild, and they take up space in an aravel that could be used to store more practical things, like weapons or food. The Clans pass them around when they meet up, but no one ever has more than two or three at a time. Keeper Deshanna managed to scrape together five all at once for a few years- two were even in Elvhen! …but we had to pass them on before I could finish translating them."

"How can the Dalish hope to learn Elvhen when you have no books?" he asked incredulously. She shot him an annoyed glower.

"Believe it or not, finding _anything_ written in Elvhen is difficult," she snapped, rolling her eyes at him. "Most humans didn't bother holding onto books they couldn't read, so even the majority of the ones that survived the fall of the empire are gone now. And most of the ones that weren't destroyed are probably in Tevinter, or tucked away in mage towers, or being used as Orlesian paperweights or something. The Dalish make use of whatever we can find. Which usually isn't much, but we make do. We can't _all_ learn Elvhen in the Fade."

"Ir abelas," Solas said hastily. "I meant to convey concern, not conceit." He gave another passing glance at the explosion of papers her room had become. "So…you are teaching yourself Elvhen?"

"I'm trying to," she confirmed with a dissatisfied frown. "Among other things, I wanted to compare the human histories with Elvhen texts, but…it isn't going very well. The Keeper was still teaching me before I left, since I only became First a few years ago. So, I understand more spoken Elvhen than I can read, and I can read more of it than I know how to write. Our language is beautiful, but the grammar is ridiculous. And why are these letters so complex?! It must have taken people half a morning just to write a simple note!"

Solas laughed and shook his head at her.

"I suppose being immortal must have made time a less valuable commodity," he said with a wide grin.

He crouched down on the floor in front of her, casually picking up one of the sheets of parchment she had written on. Her sentences were clunky and overtly direct, as a child's might be, but their meaning was still clear. That she had worked out this much largely on her own was impressive, and if the state of her room was any indication, she was clearly eager to learn. Solas smiled. It was a promising start, even if her handwriting was appalling.

"Would you like me to teach you?" he asked.

"Really?" She beamed at him. "That would be amazing!"

"What are you working on now? Perhaps I may be of assistance," he offered, leaning over to look at the open book she had been studying.

" _No!_ " Aili shouted, slamming the book shut with tremendous force before he could read more than two words. He furrowed his brows at her in confusion. She cleared her throat primly before continuing, "I mean, no, thank you, Solas. I was tinkering with a bit of a…uh…personal project. I want to finish it on my own."

"A personal project that must be written in Elvhen?" he inquired suspiciously.

"Yes. It's just... um, silly things about family and friends. You'd be bored. It's very boring and personal, you know." She told him nervously. Solas noticed that both of her hands were now desperately clutching the piece of parchment she was hiding behind her back.

"I would like to know more about your family," he said, smiling with feigned innocence. He leaned towards her, crowding her, thoroughly enjoying the panicked look in her eyes when she realized she had trapped herself.

She bit her lip and his gazed fixed on her mouth, remembering the taste of her, the gentleness accompanied by the sudden flare of heat that had passed between them. The Fade was meant to be _his_ realm, a place where he felt completely in control at all times, and she had found him, and changed him, and claimed him with a kiss, as though it were a simple thing. This strange little Dalish woman had snared him with an eager intellect, easy acceptance, and an inescapable sort of kindness, and on top of all of this, an innocent, bumbling, and alarmingly sincere affection for himself. He found he was both terrified and intrigued by her regard for him, and despite his better judgment, he knew he wanted to kiss her again.

"I could never think anything that was so clearly important to you was boring," he informed her in a low voice. "Let me help."

"W-when did you get so nosy?" She gulped nervously.

"When did you start trying to hide things from me?" he retorted, narrowing his eyes at her.

"So, I'm not allowed to keep things to myself anymore?" She frowned. "That's awfully presumptuous for a _friend_ , Solas."

"It might be," he agreed, "if you were anyone, _but_ yourself, Lethallan." He smirked at her. "You have been known to walk into camp sans clothing on occasion. Privacy hardly seems like a pressing concern for you."

"That was only _one_ time!" she protested hotly. "The Dalish don't care about nudity the same way the rest of you seem to. How was I supposed to know Cassandra would get her knickers in such a twist?"

"You should show him." said a quiet, steady voice.

Cole suddenly appeared on top of her desk in the corner of the room, perched like a strange pale gargoyle on a stack of papers. Aili yelped in surprise, but the spirit boy continued as though he hadn't heard her. "He'll laugh, but he'll like it. He needs the laughing and the light. They remind him that not everything is broken. The small, soft, sweet things will stay with him past everything."

" _No_ ," Aili hissed. "It isn't finished…and it isn't even _about_ him, and _Mythal's mercy- what are you doing?!"_

Cole had vanished and then reappeared in front of Solas with a crumpled piece of paper in his hands. The spirit looked down at it and smiled before offering it to him. He took it without comment, glancing down at the numerous blots and cross-outs that littered the page of poorly-written Elvhen.

"It has your name on it," Cole informed him cheerfully.

"N-no it doesn't!" Aili exclaimed, looking truly mortified. Cole tilted his head in confusion, peeking out at her from under his broad brimmed hat.

"Not in ink," the boy conceded, "but the words between the words; that's where the wishes are waiting. _'He sounds like these letters, like these phrases, a distant gentle murmur of a song I can't quite hear. Solas, Solas, Solas. Where do your eyes go when you think I'm not watching?'_ "

"COLE!" Aili roared in humiliation, lunging forward in order to physically restrain the blond boy from continuing. In less than an instant, the young man disappeared, causing the Dalish elf to crash headlong into her Fade expert instead, sending books and papers flying everywhere as they toppled to the floor.

Sitting out on the railing of her balcony, Cole insisted, "I _helped_. You'll see," before once more popping back out of sight.

"Elgar'nan's _ass_ ," the Dalish woman swore as she righted herself and glared out at her balcony. "I swear, if I didn't love that squirrelly little busybody, I'd wring his neck."

Solas was still on laying on a stack of scattered parchment, holding the sheet she had written on aloft with one hand. He was staring at it intently, as though trying to unlock its mysteries. Aili felt her heart plummet down into the pit of her stomach.

"Solas," she began pleadingly, "my wonderful kind friend...I will literally give you everything I own if you stop reading right now and pretend this entire conversation was just a horrific vision from the Fade."

"Your eyes...polish like the sun river?" Solas asked dubiously after several moments of silence.

"I-is that what it says?" she wondered, trying to laugh it off, but sounding more strangled than anything. "I thought... Oh Creators, it doesn't matter what I thought. If any of them have any sort of sympathy for the plight of the People, a rift will open up in my bedroom and swallow me whole." Several seconds passed without her prayer being answered, so Aili settled for burying her face in her hands.

"Your eyes polish like the sun river," Solas began again ruthlessly, amusement shaking through his voice. "Invite me to...the _bathroom_ and below? Your mouth's small knife. What do you know, a hundred ways to cut me out of company. His voice is like the heart of stars. Eternal said to me at night. Keep their hands a thousand storms... Their weapons are safe now?" he had to stop as he was overrun with laughter. He sat up so he could look her in the eye, grinning from ear to ear. "Lethallan...what _is_ this?"

"It...it's a _poem_ ," Aili admitted with a defeated sigh, her face more red than he could ever recall seeing it. "I know y-you asked for time to...consider things, b-but I just..." She buried her face in her hands again and groaned piteously. "Dread Wolf take it all, I just wanted you to know where I stood on the matter...in case you weren't sure."

"And where _do_ you stand, Inquisitor Lavellan?" he mocked her gently, a fond smile curling his lips.

"In a hip-deep pit of ignorance, it seems," she grumbled. "C-cassandra had this book, 'Swords and Shields' and-"

"That is the horrible romance that Varric wrote, is it not?" Solas interjected.

"It...it's horrible, then?" Aili asked, sounding disappointed and more than a little anxious. "The man in the story read poetry to the woman...and she seemed to like it, so..." Her amethyst eyes darted away from him, and she twisted her fingers together in her lap fretfully. "I...I've never tried to c-court someone before. In my clan, we give gifts. Simple useful things, food or clothing...but you don't really like Dalish traditions, and you don't really need anything. Nothing _I_ can give you anyway... This was a stupid idea."

"Perhaps," Solas said smilingly, "but it does not follow that it was necessarily a bad one." He returned his gaze to the verses in his hand. "There is one line at the end I am having a hard time making out, however," he informed her, squinting his eyes and bringing the page closer to his face for a more thorough inspection.

"Really?" Aili asked. "But I don't remember getting any farther than that… I fell asleep."

" _You…_ " he started, having switched to speaking in the language he was reading, " _Your butt…is good_?"

"I did _not_ write that!" Aili insisted desperately. "You're making that up!" He held the page out so that she could see the words that had clearly been penned by her own treacherous hand. She tried to snatch it back from him, but he was too quick for her.

"This belongs to me, if I'm not mistaken," Solas told her as he folded up the piece of paper into a neat square and tucked it into his tunic. "You were going to give it to me, were you not?"

"When it was _finished_!" Aili sputtered in horror. "Maybe not even then… I'm not- Wait. Y-you… _like_ it?"

"Well…it was certainly the most _unique_ attempt to garner my attention I have ever received," he said with a chuckle. He placed one hand over hers and smiled. "I am flattered that you thought of me, Lethallan."

Aili's face was burning brighter than a brazier.

"Y-you are either being impossibly nice, or you're trying to trick me into ignoring the fact that now you have something to blackmail me with," she muttered crossly.

"Perhaps a bit of both?" Solas replied with a teasing grin, slightly cocking his head to one side. He stood and made his way back towards the door, picking his way through the stacks of books as best he could. Aili stared after him apprehensively, waiting for the hammer to fall. He did not disappoint. As he reached the bottom of the stairs and was about to exit her quarters, he called up to her, "You must tell me what the poem was meant to say someday, Lethallan. In the meantime, I shall try to ensure that all of my… _assets_ remain pleasing to you."

" _Fenedhis lasa!_ " she yelled back at him, scrambling to chase him out, but he was already gone, his laughter floating back to her through the heavy wooden door.

* * *

 **Aili's Poem** -

 _'Your eyes gleam like a river in the sunshine_

 _Beckoning me to wade into their depths_

 _Your mouth is like a little knife_

 _Which knows a hundred ways to cut me to the core_

 _Your voice is like the breath of stars_

 _Eternity whispering back to me at night_

 _Your hands have held a thousand storms_

 _But your arms are now a shelter'-_


End file.
